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People participate in the fine arts for a variety of reasons:
The fine arts are important to our understanding of society, culture, and history, and are essential to the development of individual potential, social responsibility, and cultural awareness. They also contribute significantly to the intellectual, aesthetic, emotional, social, and physical development of the individual. The study of the fine arts reveals distinct and common characteristics of societies throughout history. Dance, drama, music, and visual arts are central to the development and expression of cultural identity, and are a means of both reflecting and challenging the values and norms in a pluralistic society. The fine arts are expressed in and influenced by personal contexts (e.g., gender, age, life experience, beliefs, values), social and cultural contexts (e.g., ethnicity, religion, socio-economics, evolving technologies), and historical and political contexts. An understanding of the fine arts fosters respect for and appreciation of the diverse cultural heritages and values within Canada and around the world.
Each of the fine arts has its own essential skills, techniques, and processes that provide students with unique insights and ways of assimilating and expressing all learning. As students engage in the fine arts, they devise and solve problems and apply these problem-solving processes to concrete experiences. Dance, drama, music, and visual arts provide opportunities for students to make connections among their cognitive, psychomotor, and affective learning. Fine arts activities and experiences foster development of students' critical-thinking skills, including skills for describing, analysing, interpreting, and making judgments and thoughtful responses to creative works.
The fine arts provide opportunities for students to represent their learning concretely in creative and personally relevant ways. Through creating, communicating, performing, and responding to artworks, students grow in their creative abilities, curiosity, open-mindedness, independence, persistence, and flexibility. Dance, drama, music, and visual arts also encourage the development of particular skills and competencies in their respective disciplines and related technologies, and students develop critical awareness of how those disciplines and technologies may be used for communication and expression.
Dance, drama, music, and visual arts offer expressive means for students' self- discovery and exploration of the world around them. Through the creative process, students are able to communicate, giving form and meaning to their ideas and emotions. The fine arts stimulate students' imaginations, innovation, and creativity. They also develop self-discipline, self-motivation, and self-confidence, and learn skills and competencies useful to their future employability. Through the fine arts, students also find a source of pleasure and enjoyment and gain a deepened awareness of themselves and their place in their environment, community, culture, and world.
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Revised: July 8, 1998
